the ascent of 'counterknowledge'

[Colr]

Originally Posted by HenryLB
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

God no.

Popular tune in the wartime Glesga (well, Clydebank) shipyards according to this:-

+ [Only Registered Users Can See Links. Click Here To Register]

[egb_hibs]

Originally Posted by Green Sleeves
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Almost everything you've written there is a mixture of self-denial and wishful thinking except that its true that the class dimension of my own political thinking came about through the actions of a political extremist.

She's senile now but she once conspired among the ruling elite to attack all opposition. She even used the Echelon spying system to monitor phone calls with her own party. Conspiracy was her second name.

She acted on behalf of the rich and powerful and got away with it because she understood the philosophy of carrot-and-stick better then her opposition. That she got away with throwing a few populist sops to a section of the working and middle classes who wanted to own their own homes and make a quick buck from privatised shares doesn't mean she acted equally in everyone's interests. The wealthy and powerful pocketed the lion's share.

MT killed off centralised inefficient wasteful nanny state socialism in Britian which in many ways is not a bad thing. It means the left now have to either rethink the relationship between people and state or raise the white flag.

i'd really rather not prolong the debate on thatcher any longer knowing the pavlovian responses it provokes. more to the point, it's another debate. whatever you think of her govt it's provides no evidence whatsoever for the conspiracy view of history.

i've explained why in my previous post, which you've ignored, while amusingly accusing me of denial and wishful thinking. i've expanded on my view and supported it with argument. you've failed to do likewise and i'm not now indulging a smokescreen argument over thatcherism so that you can deflect attention from that.

[egb_hibs]

Originally Posted by Dixie Chicken
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Where is the harm? So the man in the street has discovered that governments lie. Isn't that a big step forward? It weakens the power of propaganda and spin... is that a bad thing? He may be confused and uncertain as to the truth, but he has at least lost the certainty that encouraged him to elect liars in the past. Not that I am currently trying to prop up western pluralistic democracy you understand, no not at all. But where you see an apparent problem I see progress. The fact is that the death of certainty ultimately means the decline of disinformation and party spin.

It also means that western style pluralistic democracy, which has always been vindicated by the lie that people know what they are voting for, is exposed as a sham. IMO no bad thing. It is not the scepticism and uncertainty of the general public that the problem, it is the crappy poitical system that requires a gullible yet participatory public in order to claim a mandate for manipulative and dishonest governments.

i see the problem as being related to the one that concerns you. the average man in the street is ill prepared to participate in complex decision making, and democracy needs to pander to the mix of self-interest and sentimentalism that animates him politically - this is the nub of your concern, no?

well, the intellectual con trick that i'm complaining about does little to equip him in the former respect, and everything to nurture his own his worst instincts and thus reinforces the latter part of the problem.

that and it's dulled the brains of most of the educated classes, who in the past would, i suspect, have been under less illusion about the operation of the world than they appear to be today.

I think it is not a post modernist crisis, I think it is a crisis of democracy. The west needs to find a new basis for governance which does not rely on the myth of an informed and participatory public. Electorates everywhere are increasingly likely to stay at home on election day, and they can't be blamed for that. If they have woken up to the fact that politicians are untrustworthy, it is surely up to the politicians to act in good faith. No use bleating about nasty academics spoiling the show when the show is a shitty one anyway.

Reason is not asleep, it is moving forward. The monsters are being exposed as the lying, disseminating, ruthless political parties we are invited to vote for.

it's all related. i'll pick up again tomorrow fella. getting an ear bashing from the domestic despot over internet usage so gotta go right now.

in the mean time, the arguments you make are brought to mind a polemic i'm reading just now:

[Only Registered Users Can See Links. Click Here To Register]

i get a chuckle out of it's lefty baiting but blanche at the hostility to democracy and the bonkers old style conservatism, but his beefs with the demos are similar to your own ("As modern life becomes increasingly complicated across many different sociopolitical levels, Kuehnelt-Leddihn submits that the Scita — the political, economic, technological, scientific, military, geographical, psychological knowledge of the masses and of their representatives — and the Scienda — the knowledge in these matters that is necessary to reach logical-rational-moral conclusions — are separated by an incessantly and cruelly widening gap and that democratic governments are totally inadequate for such undertakings.")

what is also interesting is the way some of his more hysterical moments anticipate the output of rationalist blowhards from amis to hitchens to you-know-who these days, despite being the 1970s thoughts of a reactionary aspirant aristocrat and catholic of the ancien regime stripe. mind you, in his favour, he's anticipating phenomena that seems to have to taken the latter by surprise when they materialised some decades later.

that said, this articulates my beef with the comrades pretty well:

"It is the low drive for sameness and the hatred of otherness that characterizes all forms of leftism, which inevitably are totalitarian because, defying the divine diversity of the universe, these ideologies want to convert us by force to sameness -- sameness being the brother of equality. The leftist vision enjoins uniformity: the nation with one leader, one party, one race, one language, one class, one type of school, one law, one custom, one level of income, and so forth. Since nature provides diversity, this deadening sameness can be achieved only by brute force, by leveling, enforced assimilation, exile, genocide. All forms of totalitarianism, all leftist ideologies, reaching their culmination in the French, Russian, and German Revolutions, have gone that way -- with the aid of guillotine, gallows, gas chambers, and Gulag."

the 'low-drive for sameness' - that's it really. all the fear, loathing and envy come together in that, and spring also out of it.

[Green Sleeves]

Originally Posted by egb_hibs
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

the 'low-drive for sameness' - that's it really. all the fear, loathing and envy come together in that, and spring also out of it.

You can see the very same "low drive for sameness" all around us. You can see it in supermarkets, on television, in the mass media, in identikit political parties, in chain stores, in shopping centres, in new housing projects, and especially in the workplace.

It is the illusion of difference where individuality tends to be expressed through mass consumerism. Yet the guiding hand of socialism and leftist ideology is nowhere in sight. Kind of undermines your theory somewhat.

[egb_hibs]

Originally Posted by Green Sleeves
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

You can see the very same "low drive for sameness" all around us. You can see it in supermarkets, on television, in the mass media, in identikit political parties, in chain stores, in shopping centres, in new housing projects, and especially in the workplace.

It is the illusion of difference where individuality tends to be expressed through mass consumerism. Yet the guiding hand of socialism and leftist ideology is nowhere in sight. Kind of undermines your theory somewhat.

it's completely different.

if people want to buy all that shite it's up to them, which is kind of the complete opposite. i don't really understand why folk get so wound up that (in my opinion, of course) a lot of people have bad taste, or like stupid stuff.

it's only an issue if it intrudes on one's own life. i must admit this happens a bit with, for example, the dearth of quality programming ont telly, and the dominance of silly conspiracy ideas in the 'serious' media, but i don't feel inclined to condemn my fellow citizens to a life of identical pajama suits and queueing 7 weeks to buy a loaf of bread, just cost i get irritated by celebrity tv shows.

still, other people are a lot angrier than me i guess.